It is well known in the prior art to provide a glove box door which closes an opening in the instrument panel. The glove box door is hingedly mounted to the instrument panel for pivotal movement between a closed position and an open position. A latch assembly is provided for holding the glove box door in the closed position.
Typically, the latch assembly includes a striker mounted to the instrument panel structure and a latch claw assembly mounted to the glove box door for trapping the striker when the glove box door is in the closed position and for releasing the striker to permit the glove box door to be moved to the open position. The typical striker is a bent metal wire which presents an U-shaped hook portion onto which a latch claw of the latch claw assembly may grab. The U-shaped hook portion of the striker extends laterally and presents a large U-shaped opening being about 15 mm wide and about 20 mm long. Thus, the latch claw may grip the striker at any lateral location along the U-shaped hook portion to account for differences in lateral cross-car variations between the latch claw assembly and the striker. However, this arrangement allows considerable variance in the lateral and longitudinal location of the glove box door in the closed position. Accordingly, the glove box door may not always fit flushly within the instrument panel opening when assembled. If a misalignment occurs during assembly, the misaligned glove box door must then be realigned by moving the striker, by twisting the glove box door or by removing and repositioning the glove box door. Considerable assembly time may be spent in realignment of the glove box door depending on the degree of misalignment.